My Nostr Journey #1
Nostr floated in and out of my peripheral vision for a while. It came into focus when I read Shinobi’s article in Bitcoin Magazine, Jan. 10, 2023. As a Bitcoin/Lightning follower I ‘got it’ fairly quickly: public/private keys, json blobs, relays, and clients. I appreciated the open, simple, secure, and decentralized design.
First, I tried to download the iOS client Damus, but the Apple TestFlight Beta was already full (10,000 users). Then I checked out the Alby browser extension. Alby is a Chrome Browser extension Lightning Wallet that also generates Nostr keys. I highly recommend Alby as a Lightning client – great design.
Nostr Key in hand, I tried three Nostr web clients: Astral, Branly, and Snort. I haven’t yet implemented a relay and it is not required.
After using each client for a while Astral was slightly more intuitive, but Branly was better looking. The huge benefit with Nostr is that, because it is an open protocol where you hold your own keys, client development will iterate very rapidly and you can migrate to a new UI easily.. I will try to stay on top if it.
As I was writing this post BTCSessions just published a YouTube video about Nostr. He focused on Alby, Astral, and NIP-05. So my first few steps were probably along the right path.
Stay Tuned….
